Here for It; Or, How to Save Your Soul in America: Essays

by R. Eric Thomas

Close your eyes, go to sleep, wake up, show up to work on time for once in your life, do a good job, answer all of your unread emails, donate to charity, vote, care about the world, raise a good kid or a dog (tbd), yell at fewer strangers on Facebook, smile more (unless someone on the street tells you to, in which case don’t smile), have hope (shoutout to Barack!) but also be realistic about what you can expect out of this life (shoutout to systemic oppression!), figure out what a realistic expectation for hope in this life is, be a better person, die eventually.

And, in the end, I know that we are not at war with our terrible leaders. Instead, we are fighting against nihilism itself. We are fighting to care. What makes you happy or sad or brings you joy or makes you feel anything at all—it matters.

Listen. Here’s my living will, okay? I have no desire to survive the apocalypse. The minute the cable goes out, I’m gone. If I can’t watch rebooted versions of television shows I used to love, what even is the point? What even?! I do not understand the people in disaster movies who want to survive so that they can rebuild society. That sounds terrible. So boring, and yet so much work. Haven’t these people ever worked at a small nonprofit? It’s that. But with, like, zombies. No thanks. I don’t want to shoot a gun. I don’t want to figure out how to make fire. I don’t want to have to dig deep to find hidden reserves of resilience. Ugh. I don’t want to form a new system of government with a bunch of other idiots. I’ve only memorized Angelica’s part in Hamilton; I wouldn’t even know where to start with creating a constitutional convention. I am not post-apocalypse material. I melt down if they don’t have the shade of fabric I want at Crate & Barrel. I certainly don’t want to forage through what used to be Seattle in search of materials to make my own crates and barrels.

The problem is doomsday isn’t coming. And I don’t think we can turn back the hands of time or whisper to the cloud of dust, as much as I’d like to. I think we’re obsessed with dystopian or apocalyptic scenarios because, despite their darkness, they’re comparatively easy outs. Kind of like how sometimes you wish your company would just go out of business so that you’d have to go on unemployment and finally finish your novel or paint the study or hike the Appalachian Trail like you’ve always wanted. Actually living, getting up every day with all the fears and tragedies and challenges and potential joys of being a human in regular old neutral-smelling, depressing times, is hard enough.